The Devil You Know
by Marching Madly Onward
Summary: Life is so precious.  How can I allow it to be snuffed out so carelessly?


**The Devil You Know **

It's for your own good.

The words are foul even in my mouth. It's not a matter of a lie tainting the words. I believe in everything I've just said, or, rather, wanted to say. They are just too passé to say aloud.

Not that it much matters. We are beyond the time for words. We always have been.

You have so much talent, Kurosaki, but your gifts are matched only by your stubbornness.

It's not enough for me to explain myself to you because you won't believe me.

Your Soul Reapers are not so kind, but it is so very hard for you to grasp that fact when you've lived among them for as long as you have. They've shared your room, your battles, your woes. They lace even your DNA with their presence.

I would very much like to say something about the sins of the father, but it's just another platitude.

You won't believe me when I say this is for your own good, so I will crush you beneath the weight of your own doubts. How long can someone so wrapped up his friendships stand against his loved ones telling him to submit, to relent and, ultimately, to accept me as the friend I truly am?

Perhaps I am overselling myself. After all, Soul Society has accepted you in all of your imperfections. The gracious heavenly host has pardoned your sin of wearing their colors.

Pardon me. I very nearly choked on the sarcasm.

But the point remains: You have likely escaped the reaper's scythe. We are not so lucky.

Have you ever considered that? What happens to your dear friends when you have all the powers you could ever want? What about me? Or dear Ginjou there next to you? Or Riruka, Yukio, Jackie and Giriko?

If you regain your powers and return to Soul Society, we are all as good as dead.

That's only a half-truth. We already walk in the shadow of death every moment of every day.

We are humans with powers comparable to a Soul Reaper. I don't think I need to explain how tenuous our existence is thanks to that one, simple fact.

If you still fail to understand, ask your friend , the Quincy.

Do you think we are the first Fullbringers? Hollows spring from the seed of a human soul. They have always existed alongside us, and, so, too, have the survivors of their attacks and the children born thereafter.

We have always been here, and that grates upon the Soul Society.

It's easy for you to think of the Soul Society as unseen guardians, hunting the things that go bump in the night. They hunt the Hollows, but they have also hunted Quincies and Fullbringers to the brink of extinction.

And unlike Quincies, our powers are not the burden of generations. It takes but a single hungry Hollow and a single woman with a child in her womb to birth a new Fullbringer. We can be born at any time, and we will continue to be born as long as there are people to die in agony and regret, sowing a new Hollow.

And so our genocide will never end.

It is all we can do to survive, and I intend to survive at any cost. Life is so precious. It is the only time allowed to us when we do not chafe under the decrepit Central 46 and web of injustice and inequity spooling out from that epicenter. How can I allow these lives to be snuffed out so carelessly?

And it is for that reason I have done everything.

Turning my back on the family I jeopardized by simply breathing

Founding the Xcution movement to give people like me a home

Striking down the Soul Reaper who had every intention of betraying us to his superiors once we were helplessly powerless

Inserting myself into your life like a wolf in sheep's clothing

Yes, I realize that what I am doing will not endear me to you. You think me a charlatan.

Don't think me a sadist. I don't relish this, but, by the same token, I cannot bring myself to feel too much guilt. I am saving lives.

You are stubbornly insisting on putting them in harm's way, and still you think yourself my better.

But you will learn.

With one stroke, I will end your fruitless struggle, your incessant raging. I will give your mind the balm of remembered happiness everyone deserves.

It is for that very reason I refer to weapon of choice as the Book of the End.

Won't you let me end your suffering?


End file.
